Four Greek Words
by stolencinderella
Summary: Spencer Reid had never been given the time of day from a girl until he meets Vivian Ameliorer, a clever, creative sketch artist, who teaches Reid about the one thing he thought he'd never learn. Real Love. Reid/OC. Read&Review. More T  than M, I promise!
1. Chapter 1

"Uh… Garcia, she's coming over here," said Reid, panic rising his voice. He looked frantically around for an escape route but the moment he tried to take it Garcia hooked onto his forearm, holding him rightly and perfectly in place. "Let go. What are you doing?"

"Getting you a girlfriend," she muttered as the pretty amber-haired girl came into earshot and gave them a dazzling smile.

"Hi, I'm sorry to interrupt, but you dropped this when I bumped into you," she said. She extended her hand, in which she held a folded sheet of paper. Garcia bit her lip and pranced away to observe from their table on the other side of the patio. "You can take it, Dr. Reid. I don't bite."

"Thanks," he said.

He tried to slip it into his pocket but his hands were too shaky to allow them entrance. He licked his lips and stuttered a little as he spoke. "Y-you know my name. I don't remember really introducing myself to you before."

"That's because you rushed away too quickly for me to take the breath to ask. So I asked around, until someone could tell me," she said. "I'm-"

"I know your name. Garcia told me, it's Vivian Améliorer," said Reid.

She nodded. "I was hoping you had asked her. I'm glad they got the guy who shot her. It was so frustrating that I could draw a more detailed picture of him."

"So that's how you met her?" he said.

She nodded.

An hour later, Vivian and Reid were seated on two adjacent reclining pool chairs. After the dinner had been served, most everyone had moved inside. The rest, like the two of them by the edge of the pool, simply lingered in pairs across the dimly lit terrace. He took back all he had said about the business parties. Vivian was beautiful and knowledgeable. She was an artist and knew things about human nature from what she studied by drawing and painting them for so many years. She listened to his long-winded stories closely, right until she lost him, when she would promptly interrupt him and journey off on a tangent. He knew she was but did not mind because for the most part she kept up.

"What got you into police sketches?" he asked.

"I've always carried around a sketch pad. One evening on the subway, I happened to be doodling the man across from me when he turned around and shot a woman as he got off. I presented it to the police and after the case was closed they asked me if I wanted a job."

"You aren't carrying one with you now," Reid pointed out.

She brushed her long, soft waves behind her ear and looked at him with her speckled green eyes that glittered with delicate guilt in the moonlight. "I haven't in almost a year. I've rarely drawn anything for myself since I started working for the bureau."

"Why not," he said, sitting on the edge of his seat.

"I have grown so accustomed to drawing what I have been described that I'm having trouble drawing for myself," she said. "I guess I've lost my inspiration."

"Degas got all his inspiration from spending hours in the Parisian opera houses watching the ballerina's practice or sitting in cafés as people came and went. He even paid some models to stand in front of him on a little platform in his studio so he could just look at them and sketch until the real idea emerged and that's when he sent them away," he said. "In fact, _Little Dancer, Age Fourteen_ posed for him for months before he finally got the idea to sculpt her. Maybe your _Little Dancer_ is out there, you just have to find them…"

"I wish I had time to sit in cafés and opera houses."

"You could always start with carrying around a sketch journal again."

His knuckles brushed hers. She unfolded her hands and intertwined them in his. Reid's pulse raced as she leaned closer to him, staring relentlessly. He could feel it and it made his stomach twist in a throbbing knot. The warmth of her skin, the fragrance of her hair in the breeze, and their closeness frightened and exhilarated. Vivian was close enough that he could have counted the faint freckles on the apple of her cheeks. He wanted to reach up and touch her face or run his fingers through her hair, but his arms felt too heavy to lift away from hers. Her eyes fluttered close and his followed suit.

"Hey, Reid," interrupted Morgan, from the top of the patio. "We gotta go, man."

Vivian sat back instantly, blushing scarlet in the shadows. Reid abruptly stood up and nodded off in the direction of Morgan, who, conscious of what he disturbed, tapped his watch, and turned back into the room. He dug hands into his pockets, unsure what to do next. Vivian cleared her throat and gave him a gentle smile.

"Sorry, I have a certain obligation, and I can't miss a plane," he said.

"I know," she said.

"Can I see you again?"

Vivian nodded. "Yeah, I'd like that. Do you have a pen?"

He felt through his pockets and shook his head. She looked through her shoulder bag for close to a minute and Reid all hope of redeeming the moment Morgan had stolen from them, when she clicked a little ballpoint pen.

"I haven't got any paper though," she said and then shrugged, before Reid could retrieve the one he had returned to his pocket. "Here," she took his hand and jotted down her digits carefully across the back of his hand so that they were neat and legible.

"I really have to go," he said, more in an attempt to convince his feet to move than for Vivian's actual knowledge.

"I know," she repeated.


	2. Chapter 2

The evening, that had started off so extraordinary, reverted back to normal with such blinding intensity that Reid could barely believe, as he sat in the overstuffed airplane seats, that just an hour earlier he had been chatting with Vivian by the poolside. He and Emily were engaged in a third intense game of chess, for the latter was determined to beat the former before they landed. He reached out to move his knight to take out Emily's rook when she snatched his wrist and flipped it over to see the numbers scribbled there.

"What's this?" she said.

"A phone number."

"Well, yeah, but whose?"

Before Reid could answer, Morgan dropped lazily into the seat next to him and pulled off his headphones. "Yeah, Reid, tell us all about the attractive ginger I saw you smooching by the pool at the party?"

"What?" she gasped.

"Always the tone of surprise," he said, trying to keep his thoughts on the chess board, but he could still feel the pressure of Vivian's pen on the back of his hand.

Everything about her lingered in his mind, each detail stored away in the expanses his eidetic memory. The delicate scent that fluttered off her auburn curls as she brushed it against the breeze and behind her double-pierced ears. Her forest colored eyes glittering with the reflection of the twinkling surface of the water. The brush of her eyelashes on his cheek and the warmth of her breath when he was close enough to have counted the freckles on her nose stuck with him more vividly than anything else, torturing him with his missed opportunity.

"That's not what I meant," said Emily. "Actually, it is. Who is she?"

"Her name is Vivian," he said. "She's an artist."

"An artist?" said Morgan, incredulously. "Really?"

Confusion skimmed across Reid's face as he scanned the chessboard expertly. He moved another piece before addressing Morgan. "Yeah, she is. She works as a sketch artist, but she does her own work on the side."

"I didn't doubt you," he said. "I was just-"

"Checkmate."

"Dammit!" Emily huffed, knocking over her queen in defeat. "Again."

"Guys, lets discuss the case file," said Hotch, before they could reset their board.

Emily began to help picking up the pieces to replace them in the Reid's special cherry wood box, but he stopped her and nodded for her to join the rest of the team. Morgan, however, remained to help without complaint.

"Come on, Reid, tell me you're going to call this chick?" he probed.

He slid the last silver pawn into its place and closed the lid. He sat back and took a breath, looking at the numbers. They were dangerous and fantastic. He longed to call them as much as he feared it. Rejection, he was accustomed with but acceptance was new, so he had to shrug.

"Why not, man? She could be good for you."

"You don't even know her," he laughed.

Morgan would not be so easily swayed. He took Reid's arm as he tried to join the rest of the team. "You're right, I don't know her, but I know you. I know that you are a great judge of character, obviously, we all are. And if she likes too, than I don't want you to pass up something that could be good for you, man."

Hotch called them over again.

"I'll call her," Reid agreed.

The next weekend, Reid spent all afternoon pacing the length of his apartment with his thigh-high hound at his ankles thinking his nerves were a new game. He waited for seven o'clock. He had kept to his word and called Vivian. In fact, he had done one better. At seven o'clock he would leave to pick her up and they were going out to dinner.

"I can't do this, Amina," he said, dropping onto the couch.

She jumped easily onto the couch beside him and nuzzled her nose against his neck, madly wagging her whip-like tail. He scratched behind her tall, erect ears, feeling comforted. "Do you think I can do it?"

She barked and Reid laughed.

"Thanks," he said. "I needed that."

Dinner had never been so enjoyable. Vivian had something to say to very nearly everything that Reid brought up and her company was even more comfortable than he remembered. Halfway through their plates conversation fell temporarily.

"Do you want to see something cool?" said Reid, leaning forward.

"Of course," she said.

He rested his elbows on the table so she could plainly see both of his hands. Her eyes narrowed in curiosity as she sat back to watch the magician at work. "Can I see your napkin?"

She handed over the fabric kerchief and Reid carefully shook it out, laid it across his hand and patted it flat. Vivian's eyes caught every movement. However, when he flipped the fabric around and revealed a single rose in his hand, she gasped. He smiled brightly and handed it over.

Brushing the soft petals across her nose, Vivian breathed in the flowers delicate scent. "You are an endless wonder, Spencer Reid."

"It's the only impressive thing I can do," he said.

"Only? Certainly an IQ of… what did you say? 187, would beg to differ."

He willed himself not to feel bashful but she remembered. She rested the rose with the greatest of care on the napkin he had returned to beside her nearly empty plate.

"I want to show you something," she said, pulling out a spiral bound pad from her purse. She ran a thoughtful stroke across it with a fond smile. "You were right."

"About what?"

Accepting the journal as she slid it across the table, Reid flipped it open. The first page had a picture of a woman jogging, complete with headphones and pocketed MP3 player, surrounded by magnified details of different aspects of the larger sketch. He turned the page. A pair of children chasing a group of ducks, an old man reading a newspaper on a bench, an adolescent boy pouring over his revolving chess board. Only the first few pages were drawn on, but they were filled with the same precise pencillings.

"They are so accurate."

"I haven't drawn like this for myself in ages," she admitted. "I wouldn't have done it if you hadn't told me what you did. Turn towards the back… there's one more."

He flipped through the journal until he opened to a drawing a couple pages from the back cover. To his surprise his own face was looking back out at him. In the corner were a few cursive lines of words. "L'art n'est pas ce que vous voyez, mais ce que faire voir," she recited before he could think to try to pronounce them.

"Art is not what you see, but what you make others see," she said.

"That's Degas."


	3. Chapter 3

"Do you want to come inside?" offered Vivian, dancing on the front step of the apartment just in front of him. Reid looked around in comfortably, but she put a soothing hand on his arm. "It's okey if you don't want to."

"I'll call you," he said.

He walked down the steps away from her, resisting the urge to toss one final glance around at her, just to see her skirt disappear with the closing door. Third date. Each one was more successful than the previous, but each time Vivian left, he already wanted their next encounter to come. At work, he suddenly began to see her more, or maybe before he just wasn't looking, because occasionally he would glance into an interrogation room and she would be there. Her brow creased with concerned concentration and her pencil expertly jotting the description of a face. She once spotted him watching her console a hysteric room who tried to flee her presence. Patient, compassionate, intelligent.

The girl of his dreams? He did not want to admit it, not even to himself, for he had not, in the past weeks, been able to draw up the nerve to do the one thing to prove that it was real. That Vivian was not some sort of overdrawn fantasy he concocted to make himself feel less alone.

He pulled open his car door, which whined in painful protest, but before he could climb inside someone took him by the shoulder. For a fraction of a split second he thought of danger but the force that turned him around was placid.

"Vivian," breathed Reid, as her arms snaked around his neck and guided his face into hers.

The sweetness of her lips was unbelievable, and the shock of her attack made her irresistible. For reasons he could not begin to fathom, Reid remembered his first kiss. A girl he had tutored his first year of college pecked him out of pity like a child, but Vivian was different. Different even than Lila, but he had justified that, she had never really been into him. Still Vivian with confidence radiating from every pore and he could feel it beneath his palms as he ran them across her back. He took her in his arms, feeling her short painted nails brush through his hair.

She broke away, seemingly too quickly, and dropped off the balls of her feet. "Good night, Spencer."

Speechless, Reid could do nothing, but let his half raised arms fall limply back to his sides and see her vanish inside. For a whole minute he sit in the front seat of his car, both hands gripping the steering wheel with all his might, replaying the kiss over and over in his mind, until finally a wide smile stretched across his face and he drove off.


	4. Chapter 4

Half of October passed before the team had another case. Autumn blew into Quantico while they were gone but it welcomed them briskly as they climbed from the jet. Reid pulled his jacket closer around him the moment he felt the shiver roll up his spine. He rushed ahead of the rest of them toward the warmth of the terminal.

"Y'cold, Reid?" teased Morgan, whipping his go-back more securely onto his shoulder.

"I'm from Nevada. It never gets chilly during the day. I don't think I will ever get used to... seasons," he explained.

They bade the others goodbye and started to their cars together. He and Morgan were never especially close like, say he and JJ were. Or even they way Morgan and Penelope were, but Reid confided in him and Morgan trusted him. Friends would be a good word but the BAU was more like an extension Reid's dysfunctional family.

"How are you and Vivian?" he inquired.

"Great," said Reid, nodding his head.

Morgan nodded also. "What did you two do for your birthday?"

"Oh, she got me this," he pulled up his jacket sleeve to reveal a golden watch face unlike anything Morgan had ever seen. The cogs of the watch were visible and functioning. "It's a Stauer 1779 skeleton watch."

"Wow, that's really cool," he admitted, taking Reid's arm to get a closer look at it. "That's badass, man. She's got good taste and obviously knows her boy's style."

Reid proudly adjusted watch as they continued along. "She cooked dinner and we ate at the coffee table in my living room."

"Then did you..."

It was apparent from the look on Reid's face that he was awaiting the rest of Morgan's suggestion, but it fell. He waved a hopeless hand at the boy genius. "Ah, nevermind."

"Okey."

"You know what, no. Have you and Vivian... you know?" Morgan struggled to force the phrase out of his mouth. "Come on, kid, you gotta know what I'm saying."

Confusion creased into Reid's brow and he slowly shook his head. "But I don't."

"Have you… slept with her?"

"Slept with her? What? Why would you ask something like that, Morgan? Jeez," said Reid. He stomped out into the whistling winds ripping through the parking lot.

"Reid!" called Morgan following him out. "Is that a yes?"

"You're unbelievable."

The frustration that gripped Reid seemed to have made him temporarily forget the chill for he turned on Morgan instead of climbing into his car and speeding off, which, Morgan figured, had been his initial plan. The mocking smile he wore did not help to stifle Reid's uncharacteristic outburst, but that was why he continued to wear it. He stood across the lot so that their voices had to be raised even higher to be heard over the wind.

"It's not really any of your business what me and my girlfriend have done and just because every date you've ever been on ends in the bedroom doesn't mean that everyone is that shallow," Reid spat.

"Woah, calm down, man, I didn't think it was that big a deal…. I'm sorry."

"Well it is a big deal, and you're not forgiven," he said, opening the door to his car and tossed in his go-bag.

He rounded the car and slammed the door, before driving off.

The next afternoon was not so chilly. Reid felt brighter as if the previous day's altercation had not occurred at all. The sun had returned to banish the overbearing clouds. He called up Vivian to meet him at the park and for a while they walked around hand-in-hand as she recounted her week. It had not been very eventful but it was nice to be able to just listen for a while. They fell into the prickly grass around the corner from where he went to play chess.

"What are you thinking about?" asked Vivian, as she often did. She rolled over, holding her head up and her hair out of her face with one hand.

He looked past her straight into the sky, but there was not much to see with the glare of the sun making him squint so greatly his eyes were nearly closed. "I let a little girl beat me at chess," he said, finally returning his gaze to her. "She was five, maybe six years old. She barely knew the rules but she was so confident. You could see it in her face, and I couldn't let disappointment replace that spark, so I let her win."

"That's adorable."

"I don't know. I gave her a false sense of accomplishment and actually worked a lot harder loosing than I would have if I had winning."

Vivian ran her fingers tenderly through Reid's brown locks, easing away the stern look on his face with the touch. She smiled. "You didn't doom her to a life of false accomplishments and failure by letting her win one game. I'm sure she'll lose plenty more along the way."

She leaned over him, as he felt the weight of her press gently against him, his heart started to beat a little faster. Every time she kissed him he felt the rush, but accepted it, enjoyed it, like a cool drink of water and he did not care that there was an entire park there to see.

Then something crossed his mind that he had not allowed until now, but even an instant after it appeared there he knew his mind would not rest until he had voiced it. Vivian's embrace felt foreign. He managed to draw himself away from her and she fell easily onto her elbow. Reid tried to sweep the gossamer pressure that lingered on his upper lip to no avail.

"You're mostly right-brained, right?"

"Sure," she said, slowly. She was starting to become accustomed to conversations which she could not trace. "I guess, because I'm creatively inclined…. Why?"

"I'm pretty much entirely left-brained, myself," he mused. "I mean, I can remember visual details but I could never relay them visually the way that you do. The brain is in a constant search for greater stability and since it can't find it internally it searches elsewhere by trying to feed, for lack of a better word, off of another person."

Vivian listened intently, but she stayed silent when he paused, so he continued. "If this is true, it suggests that the only reason that you're even interested in me at all is because-"

She sighed and sat bolt upright. She did not speak, however, until he had completed his thought.

"I balance out your brain activity," he finished proudly.

"Why are you doing this?"

"_Doing_, Doing what?"

He followed her lead and pushed himself out of the grass. There was something written in her face that Reid could somehow not quiet read. She looked away from him with a solemn glint in her eye and her jaw was set like she was angry about something, but when she spoke she was calm.

"Aren't you happy?" she asked, sounding hurt. He opened his mouth to reply but she cut him off. "Are you happy being with me?"

"Wh-Yes! Yes, of course, I am!"

"Good, because I am too. But why are you trying to justify my feelings for you?"

She searched him. He saw what he had missed, but there was nothing he could say, so he looked away from her expectant gaze.

"I think I know," she revealed. Reid kept his head purposely pointed in the opposite direction. "I think that you're so scared to feel the way you do because no one ever stays. It has never worked out before and you don't want to get hurt, no one does. But I have news for you, Spencer Reid."

She reached up and coaxed him to turn to her. Reid could not believe they way she had analyzed him so intricately. Gideon had once told him that he was easy to profile. He had assumed he meant for an expert profiler, but now, Reid realized he must have meant for anyone, or maybe it was Vivian being special again. The moment his dark eyes met hers he knew she was sincere.

"I love you, and I'm not going anywhere."

His breath was gone again but for a completely different reason. Love. The word had been dancing around his head since the day he met her but he never thought he would hear it. So beautiful and musical off her soft, sweet, beautiful lips. He watched his hand reach out to her and stroke her cheek, but it was not until it met her warm skin that he felt it.

"I love you, too."


	5. Chapter 5

An apology was never truly exchanged between Reid and Morgan, but it was not really warranted. He had been insecure and now he was not. They had been banished by the words he and Vivian had exchanged in the park. He did not care how far the two of them had gone thus far, because time was guaranteed. She lingered unremittingly on his mind but it never managed to distract him from his work.

He created three separate geographical profiles for an unsub they were on the trail of at the end of month. Hotch came in and for a few moments he observed the young genius at work, until he realized that three separate conclusions were drawn with each semi-transparent map based on one set of evidence.

"Why do you have so many?" he inquired.

"One is the crimes with the belief that he wants the attention. The other is that he doesn't want to be found out, not yet, and the third…" he explained. "Is nothing, I misrepresented part of the data."

He hastily balled the only paper map and tossed it in the trash bin across the room. Most people would have rejoiced at making the basket, but Reid spun a colored sharpie between two fingers distractedly as if making it had been no great accomplishment, even Hotch gave it a double take and impressed raised brow.

"We established that he wants the attention. Why did you still draw up the other one?"

Reid grinned and placed the maps side by side. "I tried to connect all of them but then I saw something that I couldn't pass up. This city is like a roller stamp. The patterns of streets occur more than once and when I realized that, I found this."

He layered the maps so that they matched up properly and the red and blue lines were separated by several long blocks. However, when Reid slid the map over to make the lines overlap and turn purple the streets matched as well. He looked to Hotch to see the amazement on his face.

"Two unsubs? I thought-"

"The paths are exactly the same, that's not likely a coincidence. It's something mental that makes it so that he sees the congruent streets when other people don't."

Hotch flipped through the case files that rested on the edge of the Reid's table as he continued to examine his maps, quadruple checking that he had come to the right deduction.

"Have you looked at these yet?"

Reid shook his head. "I was concentrating on this first… why? Did you find something else?"

"All the victims on the blue line were in open dumpsters and had naturally blond hair. The blue were in closed dumpsters and their hair was died."

"He found that they did not naturally match his delusion so he ashamedly tried to dispose of them He did not want them associated with him, because he has a type."

"Call Rossi," he demanded, starting out of the room. "We're ready to deliver the profile."

The main room of the sheriff's department grew crowded as all the officers rolled in from all over the city, detectives on and interested in the case, and secretaries of local politicians gathered to hear the BAU give their expertly developed information. Halfway through Reid's sentence he felt his phone begin buzzing for the third consecutive time in his pocket. He could not ignore it anymore.

He excused himself and started out of the room, with the disapproving eyes of Hotch and Rossi on him. Thankfully, Morgan promptly picked up where he drifted off and Emily opened the door to let him out, but when he saw the caller ID he knew that it was good that he had succumbed to looking at it.

"Garcia? Did you find something?" he inquired.

"About the case," she said. The usual peppy luster of her voice was missing and Reid heard it instantly. Only something really bad could drain the sarcasm from Penelope. "No, this is a personal call."

"What is it?"

"Your extension has been ringing off the hook all morning and I couldn't hear it go to voicemail again so I answered it."

"And?" he said, urgently.

"It's Vivian, Reid, she's been in a car accident," she said.

Reid's world collapsed. Sound, movement, light, all ceased to exist. He could hear Penelope talking on the phone but the words seemed even more distant like they came from far down the end of a tunnel. A car accident. The one good thing in his life was hurt or dead and he was halfway across the country with no way to find himself by her side. No way to hold her hand or kiss her head or tell her that everything was going to be okey.

"They wouldn't tell me anything else but they gave me a number-"

"Send it to me," he choked out breathlessly.

"Of course," she said. "Reid, the moment I get off I'll go see her."

"Thank you, Garcia," he said. "But I j-just really need to know what's going on."

He hung up the phone to look at the number she had texted him and he clicked the call button with a shivering hand. The emotionless ring tortured him with each shrill toll, until finally a bubbly woman answered formally with the name of the hospital.

"How may I direct your call?"

"Hi… um… I'm looking for V-Vivian Amerliorer. She came in this morning," he said measured. "A… car crash."

"Oh yes. Hold on, I'll connect you," said the woman sweetly.

Before Reid could ask to whom he was being connected the shrill ringing continued. With each toll another horrid image formed in his mind. Once, a flipped car surrounded by flashing lights and ominously curious bystanders. Twice, the EMT crew sawed open a crushed driver's side door. Three times, they began to carefully extract a blood stained mass onto a-

"Hello?" said a weak voice through the receiver.

"Hi, I'm looking for-"

"Spencer? How did you know to call here?"

Tears flooded to his eyes but he swallowed them back in a tsunami of relief. "Vivian."

"I only gave them your office number. I thought you were out of town," she continued, guiltily.

"I am," he said. "but why?"

She sighed a long and drawn out sigh. She sounded exhausted but fully functional. "I didn't want you worrying about me, when you should be concentrating on your case."

"You," he began, loudly. Then looking over his shoulder to the other room, he stepped away and lowered his volume. "You got in a car crash!"

"Only a fender bender," she insisted. "Who told you?"

"Garcia picked up my extension when it wouldn't stop ringing."

"Oh… no wonder you sound so distressed. I hurt my back and neck a little so they are keeping me here for observation."

He sat down at the round table in the investigation room and pushed around maps distractedly with his fingers. "I'll fly home."

"You don't need to do that. One of my friends is on her way right now."

"Yes I do, and I don't care," he said. "They are delivering the profile right now. They are more than capable of finishing this case without my help."

"Ifyoucan," she murmured all at once and then giggled at her own silly phrase.

"What?" he inquired. She never slurred her words.

"They gave me s'm pain killers and its funny fighting the sleepiness," she said like a small child.

He lowered his voice to a soothing purr. "Then I'll let you get some rest. I'll call you when I land in D.C."

"Okey."

He could hear her drifting off into sleep and the phone beginning to slip away from her ear. Conversation arose in the next room. The briefing was finished and the BAU team was jointly making their way towards the room Reid was in, but there was one more thing he needed to tell her. The call on her end clicked and she was gone, just as the door opened.

"What was that about?" demanded Hotch.

"It was Garcia. She'd already called three times, I couldn't ignore it anymore."

"What's she got for us?" said Morgan.

"Nothing… yet. It was personal. Vivian is in the hospital. She got in an accident this morning."

"Oh my God," gasped Emily. "Is she okey?"

Reid nodded. Rossi said, "Who is Vivian?"

"She's my girlfriend and I was…"

"Reid has a girlfriend," Rossi mouthed to Emily, incredulously.

Hotch interrupted Reid's request with his permission. "Wish her well from all of us."

"Thanks," said Reid, leaving the room.

Rossi followed him all the way out with his eyes before speaking as if the genius has super hearing along with everything else. "Is anyone else appalled?"

"Everyone else knew about it Dave," said Hotch, flipping through the suspect list.

"You did?"

"I didn't know that he actually had someone, I knew he was crushing."

Rossi turned to Emily and Morgan. Emily just pushed away from them in her rolling chair and Morgan snorted, shaking his head.


	6. Chapter 6

*** Authors Note: I won't do these very often because I don't have the time but I just wanted to thank everyone for your support and love. I probably wouldn't have gotten this far without you. I work really hard to write and update often. Reid and Review ;)***

It was close to six o'clock when Reid arrived at the hospital and Vivian was just waking up. She was worse for wears than she had let on over the phone. Her face and arms were scratched and bruised, but only a cut on her hairline was serious enough to be covered with a small bandage. She raised a feather-light hand to let it fall into Reid's. She mumbled through an introduction drawing Reid's attention to a dark haired young woman that had been lounging in the window seat. As Vivian slowly regained proper consciousness, Marina and Reid chatted. Somehow the former managed to engage him in an intellectual conversation, which she struggled to follow.

"That's Penelope," interrupted Vivian, gazing around to see the bright colors emerging from the elevator. She tapped Reid on the arm and nodded to her.

"Yeah, I'll intercept her," said Reid.

"What do you thing?" Vivian asked the moment he was out of earshot.

Marina was still slightly baffled by the intensity of his conversation. She shook her head in amazement. "Are you sure that he's your boyfriend? Because I someone may have replaced him with a robot when you weren't looking."

"He makes a very persuasive argument," she said. Her friend scoffed.

"That's an understatement. The guy is like an attractive, walking search engine."

"So you like him?

"Oh yeah, he's good looking," said Marina, leaning closer to Vivian. "There's no denying that, but, Viv, you have noticed the guy is a total brain, right?"

"He's sweet," she insisted. "And we've got a lot in common."

"If you say so."

"Vivian, you wonderfully fantastic woman, never make me think I'd have to face the world without your beautiful face," demanded Penelope, placing a large box of chocolates and attached to a heart shaped balloon on the bedside table.

"I promise. Hey! Don't set them there," Vivian said. "Hand them over. I didn't get in a car crash to be tortured by chocolates just out of reach."

They chatted over the chocolates as Vivian allowed their fingers to trespass into the box to knick a treat. Until Penelope realized she had not been introduced to Marina on the other side of Vivian's bed. She extended her hand in welcome over Vivian. Her nails were painted to resemble a bright green zebra and her fingers were decked with several flashy rings and a charm bracelet tingling alongside several plastic bangles and multi-colored silly bands around her wrist.

"I'm Penelope. Ah, Garcia. Either one is fine," she greeted.

"Marina."

Visiting house came to a close and Vivian's nurse came around to sweep them away. Only Reid demanded to stay so an extra blanket and pillow were brought for him. He stretched out on the window seat and fell asleep. In the morning, Vivian rolled out of bed and dressed, feeling rested. She was combing her hair when he woke. She saw him in the mirror and smiled.

"Good morning," she said in a sing-song voice. "Will you drive me home?"

"Are you being discharged," he asked groggily.

She nodded as he clambered off his makeshift bed. They left the hospital by ten, but because the team was still away, Reid was in no rush to get to the office. He took her for breakfast and a much needed cup of double-shot coffee.

His chestnut colored Pharaoh hound bounded up to the door of his apartment the moment the key hit the lock. She waited patiently for the door to close behind both Vivian and Reid before jumping excitedly at them. Her muzzle and back blushed with happiness as was unique for her species. Vivian scratched behind her erect white-tipped ears.

"Good girl, Amina," laughed Vivian. "Yeah, I missed you too."

Amina ran in a precise circle, emitted a single piercing bark, and charged off into the kitchen and did not return. Still lingering on the doormat, Reid watched Vivian toss her long locks out of her lively face as if in slow motion. She pulled him towards the middle of the room and, with his hands cradling her lower back, he guided her to his lips to wipe away her dimpled grin. The warmth of her was always what he missed the most but there was something else. A spark that, as he held her, sizzled, growing hotter every second. She held herself closer so that her curves were pressed against him. It burned at her released her suddenly.

But the flame remained in her eyes as she playfully pushed him to sit on the couch. She stood in front of him between his legs, the couch and the coffee table. Her poise grew to see his ever-analyzing eyes scanning her over with the slightest glimmer of hunger. They were set aflame with fantastical desire as she rocked slowly to pull away her shirt.

"Vivian," he said, breathlessly, fingers twitching slightly at his sides.

She guided one of his hands to her hips and allowed them to dance up her torso as she lowered herself back into his electric kiss. Soon enough, Vivian's shirt was one of many articles of clothing strewn across the floor of the living room. Reid's tie swayed slightly in the draft where it clung to the lampshade hook, but the disarray was the last thing on either of their minds.

"He just looked awestruck when I said 'girlfriend'," he whispered into her hair as they lay beneath the warmth of a throw blanket a while later.

Vivian laughed. "That's adorable." The phone rang. Vivian rolled over to dig through the pocket of Reid's trousers to emerge with it. "Speak of the devil."

Reid sat bolt upright, forcing Vivian to sit up farther down the sofa. "No way," he said, looking frantically around for his clothes. "Where is-?"

She answered the phone and put it to her ear, watching the horror on his face, lounging backwards on with the blanket wrapped around her torso. "Hello… No, this is Vivian… You did? That's wonderful… Yes, of course, I'll tell him… Thank you, Rossi."

Hanging up promptly, she dropped the phone on the floor before Reid could reach for it. He fell all too willingly back into her passionate embrace for another round.


End file.
